Jim Meyerle, educational manager of Urban Options, talks about the edible forest garden in front of the demonstration house on Grove Street. The edible garden has many different species of perennial herbs, vines, trees and fruit-bearing shrubs.
Football-sized squash and budding tomato orbs grow among a produce section’s variety of herbs and vegetables in what would normally be the front yard of 405 Grove St.
This is not the garden of a homeowner – it is the organic demonstration garden of Urban Options, a nonprofit organization founded in 1978 to educate people about how to efficiently use energy and natural resources.
“This is a more earth-friendly approach,” as opposed to a standard lawn, said Jim Meyerle, Urban Options educational manager.
Pollution created by gas-powered mowers and edgers, gas and oil used by mowers, heavy use of water, and chemical fertilizers make lawns an intense use of land and puts a strain on the environment, Meyerle said.
Urban Options’ organic garden is a small-scale example of permaculture, where a variety of plants all work together as they would in nature to create a model ecosystem based on how the earth works naturally, Meyerle said.
Vegetables, flowers and vines of the garden take up all the space in the front of the house. Chive, basil, sage, oregano, tomato, cabbage, squash, strawberry, raspberry, asparagus and horseradish plants – all organically grown without the use of pesticides or herbicides – fill the raised flower beds.
The vegetable plants and herbs don’t need chemicals because other plants in the garden attract butterflies, insects and other critters to eliminate pests that would normally feed on the vegetables, Meyerle said.
“With this edible garden, people come by and ask, ‘Hey, what’s this all about?’ – that’s why we do it,” he said.
The big picture
Urban gardens, like the one at 405 Grove St., could have a far-reaching impact on the environment, Meyerle said.
Moving to a system where more food comes from local sources is a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, he said.
The United States uses about 21 million barrels of oil per day, while the demand for all of Europe is 15.5 million barrels, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Approximately 60 percent of oil used by the United States is for transportation, and a way to reduce the demand for oil is to rely on more locally grown food, Meyerle said.
If people grew more of their own food, the demand for food produced at big farms that ship across the country would decrease, Meyerle said.
“Clearly, you would have a significant drop in the consumption of fossil fuels,” he said.
Educating people about the local and national impacts of focusing on locally grown produce is the main goal of the Urban Options garden, Meyerle said.
Jay Tomczak, a 2005 MSU alumnus who is a permaculture designer with Earthtrust Services, designed the garden as a smaller model of his permaculture garden at MSU’s Student Organic Farm.
“A garden like this can be managed and applied at different scales,” he said. “Ideally, a whole neighborhood would have something like this to have a situation where you have a network of gardens.”
If gardens like the one at Urban Options were found at more homes, they could help the ecosystem by reducing the amount of chemicals being put into the soil in the area, while producing food and being ornamental as well, Tomczak said.
“Permaculture is about empathizing with the plant – putting yourself in the shoes of the plant and understanding what the plant needs,” he said.
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Going organic
Aside from raising environmental awareness, Urban Options also serves as a meeting area for those looking to become more green-minded.
Although interest in organic gardening is blooming, many still prefer synthetic gardening materials.
“It’s an up-and-coming fad, but I still think there is a strong liking for some of the nonorganic ways,” said Nick Zimmer of Home Harvest Garden Supply, 4870 Dawn Ave. “They’re all made from the same basic elements, it’s just the difference of how they’re extracting it.”
Zimmer, who is in charge of sales and plant maintenance with Home Harvest, said synthetic gardening supplies outsell organic supplies by about 2 to 1, but many of the newcomers to gardening are going organic.
“It gives them piece of mind that this product came from nature and not from a lab,” he said.
Meyerle compared the potential impact of small organic gardens to light bulbs.
“If every house in Michigan converted one incandescent bulb to fluorescent, that would save enough energy to light the city of Lansing for a year,” he said.
To Meyerle, the same goes for organic gardens.
“If everybody does a little something, it’s going to make an impact.”
